The Donald Trump administration has halted the use of expensive military planes to transport migrants who entered the US unlawfully, reported The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
The report indicated that utilizing US military planes to send certain migrants back to their home countries or to a military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been costly and ineffective.
US defense officials informed The Wall Street Journal that no flights are planned for the upcoming days, with the most recent military deportation flight taking place on March 1. They mentioned that the halt might be prolonged or established indefinitely.
A report from the news agency Reuters indicated that a US military deportation flight to Guatemala had a cost of at least $4,675 for each migrant, based on information from US and Guatemalan authorities.
That amounts to over five times the $853 price of a one-way first-class fare on American Airlines from El Paso, Texas, the flight’s origin, based on an analysis of publicly accessible airline ticket prices.
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It is also considerably more than the expense of a commercial charter flight by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
US President Donald Trump was elected with a pledge to execute the largest deportation “in American history.” Although a majority of the migrants facing expulsion are from Latin America, some are also being returned from much farther away globally.
Trump initiated the military deportation flights in January as a component of his national emergency declaration concerning immigration, having thus far dispatched six planeloads of migrants to Latin America.
